


Personally, I Disagree With Their Ideas

by transcryptidone



Series: The Nursery at the Top of the House [3]
Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Family Fluff, Gen, Maeve's POV, Other, Polyamory, Teenager being a teenager
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-14
Updated: 2020-12-14
Packaged: 2021-03-10 21:08:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,149
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28063731
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/transcryptidone/pseuds/transcryptidone
Summary: “Please, Mom,” she pleads.Mom sighs as she brings Felix up to her shoulder and pats at the baby’s back. “I said no, Maeve.”“Dad and Papa get to go out all the time!” she argues.All she wants is to go out with her friends to a concert. Sure, she waited a little late to ask about the concert tonight, but her friends onlyjusthad an extra ticket and this was her best chance at getting a yes from Mom.“Dad and Papa are adults,” Mom says. “They know how to take care of themselves and each other. You and your friends are not the same.”Maeve feels tears burn at her eyes and anger clench in her belly. She just wantsone thing. “Just because you’re fine with being left out, doesn’t mean I have to stay at home all the time!”----A snippet in the life of Will, Abigail, and Hannibal's little family that isn't quite so little.
Relationships: Will Graham/Abigail Hobbs/Hannibal Lecter
Series: The Nursery at the Top of the House [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2006617
Comments: 9
Kudos: 19





	Personally, I Disagree With Their Ideas

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this based on a suggestion from Kinkylittlewolf. I’m not sure if this what was hoped for or what anyone wanted, but I really appreciated the suggestion and it inspired me to go in this direction.

“Please,” she says again for the thousandth time – _or maybe the fourth?_   
  
“No,” Mom says again like she did the previous times.   
  
Maeve had tried waiting until her mom was busy feeding the latest of her way too many siblings. Dad and Papa always say Mom looks the calmest when she’s feeding a baby and Maeve can see what they mean. Mom’s eyes are glued to the baby’s little face as he makes soft, contented little noises while he eats. Sometimes when she looks at Mom like this, she knows this is how her mom looked at her when she was a baby too and she might almost feel an echo of it again. Of course, Mom still looks nicely at her and loves her, but it’s different. It doesn’t seem the same. Especially when Maeve’s feeling frustrated.   
  
“ _Please, Mom,_ ” she pleads.  
  
Mom sighs as she brings Felix up to her shoulder and pats at the baby’s back. “I said no, Maeve.”  
  
“Dad and Papa get to go out all the time!” she argues.  
  
All she wants is to go out with her friends to a concert. Sure, she waited a little late to ask about the concert tonight, but her friends only _just_ had an extra ticket and this was her best chance at getting a yes from Mom.  
  
“Dad and Papa are adults,” Mom says. She doesn’t wince as Felix grabs a fistful of hair and pulls. She just taps at the back of his little fist with her finger. “They know how to take care of themselves and each other. You and your friends are not the same.”  
  
Maeve feels tears burn at her eyes and anger clench in her belly. She just wants _one thing_. “Just because you’re fine with being left out, doesn’t mean I have to stay at home all the time!”  
  
“Maeve.”  
  
Dad is standing in the doorway when Maeve turns around. She flinches at being caught being _rude_ to her mother. Dad’s arms are crossed in front of his chest and his eyebrows are furrowed to match his frown. Even through the stubble on his cheek, she can see how he clenches his jaw ever so slightly. “Put on your jacket and hat and come outside with me,” he says and she knows better than to argue.  
  
She grabs her jacket and hat from the hooks by the door and follows her dad out to the garage. Dad’s already wearing his beanie and his favorite jacket for when he’s working on something. It’s torn and fraying in a few places from where it’s gotten caught on something and there are some oil stains. There’s no heat out in the garage and she can see her exhale as she breathes out. She can see her dad’s breath too and she knows it must be freezing into the stubble that grows on her dad’s top lip. She’s felt it before when he comes back in and gives her a kiss on the forehead.  
  
He returns to working on the engine on the bench, quiet and focused. Metal clinks as he picks up his tools, uses them with precision, and sets them back in their place. He does it like it’s second nature - like he doesn’t even need to think - but she knows better. Her dad is so smart. He and her Papa are the smartest people she knows. They talk all the time about things she doesn’t understand. She asked her dad one time about why he just works on engines when he could be doing so many other things. He told her that there are plenty of brilliant people doing simple jobs.  
  
Maeve can see her dad settle into something like calm as silence settles in too, but the longer the silence stretches, the more she squirms. She knows her dad can keep quiet for what seems like _forever_. It’s half-silent treatment, half-timeout and somehow manages to feel like both punishment and not. Even when she can tell he’s upset, _really upset_ — like when she and Gale played where they shouldn’t, shattered at least half a dozen bottles of wine, and got cuts on their hands and knees from the glass — _even then_ , he’s quiet until everyone is calm. She doesn’t know how he can stay so quiet for so long, though she thinks he might cheat by talking to Papa without _talking_. When the silence breaks, they always seem to already know exactly what the other one will say.  
  
“I’m sorry,” she says to get it over with.  
  
“For what?” he asks, not looking up from his task.  
  
She touches a wrench’s ratcheting head. The cold makes the metal bite at her fingertip. “For being rude to Mom.”  
  
“Then it sounds like you should be apologizing to your mother,” Dad says as he sets down another tool and nods to the one she has.  
  
She hands it to him and sighs, “Okay.”  
  
Dad hums and nods and keeps working. “Why were you being rude?”  
  
“I want to go out with my friends and she said no,” she says and she tucks her hands into her coat pockets as she shivers.  
  
“I’m sure she had a good reason,” Dad says, still keeping his head down.  
  
Her sigh of complaint comes out choppy as another shiver seems to rattle her ribcage. “She never lets me do anything.”  
  
“She doesn’t let you do _everything_ ,” Dad corrects.  
  
That’s the other thing about him and Papa, when they _do talk_ they care _a lot_ about the words. From the moment she or any of her siblings could start to talk, Dad and Papa would go on and on about how words have _meaning_. She and her siblings started to learn to write and Papa would teach them the root and origin of a word whenever he told them how to spell it. She’s seen spelling bees in the movies, but she always thinks she and her siblings would be really good at them if they’d lived in the U.S. where they could really compete.  
  
“My friends get to go out all the time,” she argues and at least her annoyance might keep her a little warm. Her heart beats a little harder in her chest to remind her how badly she wants to go. “I just want to go out like you and Papa go out. I don’t want to be stuck at home like Mom.”  
  
“Mom isn’t _stuck_ anywhere,” Dad corrects again. “She could go out with us if she wanted to, but she doesn’t. Your mom knows that there’s more to being included than going everywhere and doing everything.”  
  
“ _It’s about the quality of time, not the quantity_ ,” she recites with a roll of her eyes. Mom only seems to say it every five seconds. Maeve first remembers her saying it when she first asked about Dad and Papa going out without them and now she just seems to say it all the time.  
  
“Exactly,” Dad says. “I’m sure you can find a safer way to spend time with your friends that Mom, Papa, and I can agree to. You’re a smart girl.”  
  
She huffs and buries her cheeks in the collar of her coat as she pouts. She doesn’t _want_ to find _something else_ to do. She doesn’t want another sleepover, especially when all of her siblings will be getting in the way and trying to talk to her friends. She thinks Gale might have a crush on one of her friends and that would be just _too embarrassing_ to handle. Her brother always tries to butt-in and make conversation when her friends come over and Maeve just wants to be able to spend time _alone_ with _her_ friends.  
  
Dad lets them descend back into silence and she broods until Papa calls them from dinner. She and Dad come in from the garage and hang up their coats and hats again. When they enter the kitchen, Papa brushes a thumb against the pink on both of their cheeks and they both wrinkle their noses as if they don’t like it. Papa kisses Dad’s cheek too so that he’ll scoff and huff and then Papa hands him a glass of wine.  
  
“Maeve, please go help your brother set the table,” Papa tells her. “He hasn’t gotten to the silverware yet – forks and knives, if you would.”  
  
She goes to the drawer and gets out eight sets of silverware – Felix doesn’t need any, of course. She carries the forks and knives into the dining room where Gale has already put down placemats and glasses of water for everyone who’s too young to drink wine. He’s still folding the napkins in half at each spot when she gets there.  
  
“I heard you got in trouble,” he says.  
  
Maeve’s not sure how he can see her when his hair has grown so long that it hangs down around his face. She thinks Gale needs a haircut, but even if Papa _might_ care, Dad and Mom really don’t so nothing gets done about it. Whenever she makes fun of her brother for it, he says she’s just jealous because he got Dad’s hair. He’s right. Her hair is long, straight, and dark like Mom’s and there’s nothing _wrong_ with that, but she’s always thought Dad’s hair looked nice.  
  
“How did you hear that?” she asks him. She only _just_ argued with Mom a little while ago and Mom doesn’t usually gossip. Dad’s been with her and mostly doing the silent treatment so _clearly_ he didn’t tell anyone.  
  
“Eden told me,” he says with a laugh.  
  
“ _Of course they did_ ,” she groans.  
  
Eden is such a _suck-up_ and a tattletale. They want to do everything Papa does and they tell him _everything_ they hear. As soon as they could talk, Eden was getting her and Gale in trouble. They only have ever seemed to have one secret and that went away too as soon as they came out.  
  
Gale takes his seat after he finishes with the napkins and by the time she’s done with the silverware, almost everyone else has come to join them. Dad takes his seat to the right of the head of the table and Mom at the left. Bonnie is next to Dad and Trixie is next to Mom because the twins won’t behave themselves, _especially_ if they sit next to each other. Eden sits by Trixie and Gale’s seat is next to Eden’s, which leaves Maeve by Bonnie, which suits her just fine because she doesn’t want to have to sit next to Eden right now and Bonnie doesn’t bounce her knee under the table like Trixie does.  
  
Papa’s seat at the head of the table stays empty. He’s always the last to sit down. Sometimes Mom or Dad are second-to-last when they’re taking care of a baby or two and sometimes Eden is second-to-last because they want to help with presenting the food. Papa carries in three plates – two in his hands and one balanced on his arm – and sets them down before leaving to retrieve three more. Eden brings in the last two and Maeve tries not to glare when they set one down in front of her.   
  
Dinner goes okay but Maeve can’t help but look at the clock as it ticks on the wall. With every second it ticks closer and closer to when her friends were meeting up before the concert. They were getting together for dinner too, but Maeve hadn’t even gotten around to asking her mom about that part.  
  
There’s chatter all around her – conversations about school, the holidays, and the snow. Bonnie and Trixie have seen snow plenty of times since they moved again, but the twins always act like it’s something brand new. Maeve can feel Papa’s eyes on her as she keeps quiet, but he doesn’t ask her any pointed questions to draw attention. He simply swirls his wine and watches her from the corner of his eye.  
  
After dinner, she has to wait for everyone to settle in for the night. With so many people in the house, she has to wait for a _very_ long time. As soon as it seems like everyone might have gone to their rooms and at least closed the door even if they weren’t _actually_ going to sleep, then she hears Felix cry and she knows Mom is up again. Sometimes Maeve wishes she was an only child. But then she’s needed siblings to complain to when their parents are being particularly weird and annoying.  
  
While she waits, Maeve changes into her nicer clothes and does her best with her make-up. She’s still not that good at it. When it’s finally all quiet and it seems like it’s for good this time, she tiptoes as quietly as she can to her bedroom door, twists the knob slowly, and pushes the door open carefully. With that feat done, she’s just as cautious with her footsteps as she walks through the hallway and down the stairs.  
  
“Your mother did this too when she was younger,” Papa says and when she turns around he’s sitting in his chair in the living room that faces the front door. The tablet in his lap casts a white and blue glow from underneath and creates a glare in his reading glasses. “Mom didn’t want to stay where she was supposed to be either.”  
  
Maeve sighs as she relaxes her posture, which was held tense from feeling startled. She rolls her eyes as her shoulders fall. “Are you sure we’re talking about the same person?”  
  
Papa reaches up to click on a lamp and flips the cover on his tablet closed. The yellowy light treats him differently. He looks softer and warmer the way Maeve remembers from nights when she was sick and he brought her chicken soup and held her because the fever always made her cry.  
  
“You have this impression of your mother as someone who never leaves home, why?” he asks and if Dad’s the one that stays silent, Papa always wants to _talk_. He asks questions like already knows the answers but makes her answer anyway.  
  
“Because she _does_ stay home,” she says as she comes over to sit next to him in another chair. It’s usually Dad’s chair. He’ll sit here with Papa and have their conversations while their eyes flit back and forth from the door.  
  
“Dad stays home more often than Mom does,” Papa counters. “Your mother goes to work every day.”  
  
Maeve considers how to be specific in the way he wants her to be, but all she can come up with is: “Because you do stuff without her.”  
  
“Mom and I go out to the opera,” he counters again. “Mom and Dad go fishing together.”  
  
“That’s only for a few hours,” Maeve argues. “You and Dad stay out all night together.”  
  
“Mom and I have stayed in a hotel after a night at the opera,” he counters again. He always has something to say to _everything_.  
  
“Yeah but only _sometimes_ ,” she tries to argue again.   
  
Papa crosses one leg over the other and shifts forward in his seat as he folds his hands together. “Why does it feel important to you that your mother seems left out?”  
  
Maeve opens her mouth and then, when no words come, she closes it again. She wants to say it’s _not_ important to her. She doesn’t _want_ her mom to feel left out. It’s just that Maeve has always wished she could go where her Dad and Papa go when they go out for the night and no matter how many times Mom says it, Maeve’s still never really understood why her mom would be okay with being left behind.  
  
“You see yourself in your mom and project onto her the things you worry about yourself,” Papa suggests.  
  
“No, I don’t,” she insists with a shake of her head even though he’s probably right. He’s _always_ right. Whenever she tries to argue with one of his _observations_ , by the time they talk it through – which sometimes can seem to take _forever_ – she finds out he was right all along. “You and dad always say I look like her but I’m _not_ her.”  
  
“No, you’re not,” he agrees with a slight smile. “If your friends are making you feel left on your own, disobeying your parents and getting grounded won’t be an effective solution.”  
  
She crosses her arms and sinks further into the chair. It smells like Dad and his dogs. “If you let me go, I wouldn’t have to _disobey_.”  
  
“Your safety is what’s most important to us,” he tells her as he shifts farther forward until his elbows are on his knees and he’s looking at her so intently that she can’t really look away. “And there are ways to appease your loneliness that do not put your safety at risk.”  
  
“Dad said that,” she sighs. “But I don’t want another _sleepover_.”  
  
Papa laughs and reaches up to slip away his glasses and fold them to tuck away in his suit pocket behind the pocket square. “You have to think more _creatively_ , Maeve.”  
  
She looks at him in surprise and he smiles softly at her as she tries to _think._ He waits like Dad does but rather than distracting himself with another task, he holds the silence as he holds her gaze. He waits and waits and doesn’t seem bothered in the slightest. He seems to like watching when she and her siblings try to figure things out. He’s said before that he likes watching new minds as they make their discoveries.  
  
“It’s my birthday soon,” she says finally.  
  
“Yes, it is,” he encourages.  
  
“And I’ll need a party,” she continues.  
  
“That’s to be expected for a birthday, yes,” he agrees as he laughs again and gives the rare kind of smile where she can see his teeth. She always wishes she could see that more often, but she still hasn’t figured out exactly how she earns it – like right now, she’s probably still in big trouble for trying to sneak out.  
  
“A _really_ _nice_ _party_ ,” she says, thinking of her last birthday party. They’d gotten hotel rooms for her and her friends and they were allowed to stay up all night and order as much room service as they liked and Papa made her favorite birthday cake that was way better than any bakery made. They’d gone to a movie and ice skating and just about everything she could imagine at the time. Her next birthday can be _even better_ than that.   
  
Papa stands up from his chair and gives her a kiss on the top of her head. “Only the best for you,” he says and his hand on her shoulder is heavier and firmer. “Now I think it’s time you went up to bed. We can talk about everything else in the morning.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks again to everyone who’s commented! Please continue to feel free to send me suggestions. I can’t make any promises that I’ll use them or that I’ll go about it the way you expected, but I really appreciate everyone who is invested enough in this series to want to see more. When I was posting the first fic, I was afraid no one would read it, so it always makes me so happy that people not only read it but seem to like it too. :)


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